The Walking Seminar is an monthly walk, hosted by Annemarie Mol, during which we talk-walk about various issues concerning academic work. The idea is that talking-while-walking enhances thinking in ways not attainable behind a desk or in a seminar sitting down.

maandag 4 januari 2016

With the best
wishes for 2016, we would like to announce the first edition of the Walking
Seminar 2016. It will take place on the 29th
of January and will carry the theme that we never got to walk and talk about last
year due to excessive rain.

Ethnographic methods and guiding questions

Here is the tension: if you go into the field without
a question your investigations risks to lack direction and you may not get any
kind of grasp on what is going on. However, with a question that is too tight
or too tightly handled, you may not be open enough to surprises. What are good
ways of handling that tension in the practice of doing ethnographic research –
that is to say what are good ways in your research?

If you are in the very last stage of a project, this
tension has not gone away. For even if you are no longer in the position to
gather more stories from the field, you still face the question how to tell
those stories: as answers to questions you (ever so astutely) asked or as
surprising findings that unexpectedly hit you in the face? (There may be other
variants... you are free to discuss while walking!)

For those who would like to orient their thinking beforehand, here is a possibly inspiring text:

Taylor, Janelle S. 2014. “The Demise of the Bumbler and the Crock: From Experience to Accountability in Medical Education and Ethnography.” American Anthropologist 116 (3): n/a – n/a. doi:10.1111/aman.12124.